Mira Nair's Maisha Film Labs teaches filmmaking to African students

By Sarah Sluis

"If we don't tell our stories, no one else will." This is the slogan for a non-profit film training program, Maisha Film Labs, founded by the director Mira Nair. Based in Uganda, the program selects

screenwriters, directors, cinematographers, editors and sound mixers to participate in an intensive "boot camp" taught by experienced filmmakers. GOOD magazine profiled the program, and has a video detailing the process that includes interviews with students in the program.

I personally would love to see more films come out of Africa--I still remember the impact of seeing Senegalese director Ousmane Sembene's Black Girl (made in 1966), a film that gave voice to the colonized and has since become a film school staple. If Maisha Film Labs is a success, a generation of "film brats" may grow up crediting the program for introducing them to filmmaking.

Mira Nair's films have likewise risen to the challenge to tell stories that would otherwise lack voice. One thing I like about Nair's films (the ones I have seen) is that they "show" a different side of India to people who are only cursorily familiar with the country and culture. The Indian-born director's films (including Monsoon Wedding, Mississippi Masala, and The Namesake) have been warmly received in America and all over the world, in part because they blend Bollywood sensibilities with Western-style filmmaking, giving voice to people and stories unfamiliar to Western audiences, but in a familiar, welcoming style. (Not that three-hour song/dance melodramas with strong use of wind machines don't have their special appeal.) Geographically, they often straddle the East and West, making the films more relevant to Western audiences. With someone like Nair heading the program, I hope to see more films released in the United States that show Kenya and Uganda to the rest of the world--and I'm not talking about that season of "Survivor."